IWWAGE-Institute for What Works to Advance Gender Equality

Mridusmita Bordoloi

Economist

Mridusmita is an Economist at IWWAGE, an initiative of LEAD. She has 20 years of research experience, primarily in the areas of India’s labour market, education sector, child protection, and household sector income & consumption patterns in India. Her research work has been largely based on quantitative analysis of official large-scale surveys (NSSO, PFFS, NFHS, ASI), census (Census of India, U-DISE Plus), macro-economic datasets, and India’s public finances (Union budget, State budgets, and District treasuries). She has extensive experience in conducting primary surveys, including sampling design, questionnaire designing, and training. She has focussed on understanding the status of provisioning of public welfare services in the social sector, equity in outcomes, and implementation of various policy interventions. She has studied the implementation processes of centrally sponsored schemes related to education and child-protection sectors, including analysis of public finances and governance structures. She has also conducted fund-flow tracking surveys to understand last mile reach of public finances and utilisation of budgets. In the area of labour market, she has worked on financial returns to education, informality, social security of unorganised workers in India, linkages between education and labour market, and gender-gaps in labour market outcomes. Currently she is engaged in research to understand challenges related to women’s labour market participation in India and ways of enhancing women’s work participation.

Moumita Sarkar

Co-Lead (SWAYAM)

Ms.Sarkar  has an undergraduate degree in Chemistry (H) from University of Calcutta followed by a Post Graduation degree in Rural Development and Management from University of Kalyani, West Bengal. She has also won the Mathematics Olympiad.

She has an experience of twelve years in programme management, research, training and advocacy with national and international organizations like Ministry of Rural Development (Govt.of India), UN Women, UNDP, J-PAL and CInI (TATA Trust). Her core areas include Livelihoods and Gender.

In the recent past, she has been instrumental in drafting policy documents under the guidance of the Additional Secretary and Joint Secretary of MoRD, commissioned MGNREGS action research studies to provide gender responsive recommendations based on field findings and actively engaged with the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojna-National Rural Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NRLM) team to draft the gender protocol  at NIRD&PR. AS UN Volunteer she has taken the lead in preparing teaching material for three months certificate course on Livelihood Planning and Supply Chain Management in Chhattisgarh SIRD adopting a case based training model. She also undertook qualitative research studies to review the Read India programme outcomes in Bihar.

She has been invited by various institutions like IIPA, VVGNLI, NIRD&PR, Bhartiya Vidyapeeth College of Nursing (Pune), Bengal National Chamber of Commerce & Industry to deliver session on Gender.

She will be based at IWWAGE, Delhi office.

Surabhi Awasthi

Senior Research Associate

Surabhi Awasthi is a Senior Research Associate at IWWAGE, and is currently working with the Strengthening Women’s Institutions for Agency and Empowerment (SWAYAM) for the National Rural Livelihood Mission. She has previously worked with the National Human Rights Commission as a consultant providing research support in the policy and research division on the issues related to women and children. Before joining IWWAGE, she led the research team for the Geography of Philosophy Project based at IIT, Delhi, and headquartered at the University of Pittsburgh (USA). She is a trained qualitative researcher with experience in narrative inquiry and ethnography; her research interests include gender, labor, and changing family institutions. Surabhi holds an M.Phil. in Social Work from the University of Delhi, where she was awarded a Junior Research Fellowship from the University Grants Commission, India. Through her work, she aims to bridge the gap between academia and practical policy goals, particularly related to furthering women’s equality in India through education and welfare policy. In her free time Surabhi enjoys cooking and researching about food history and food science, and spend time with her cats.

Pallavi Duggal

Communication Manager

Pallavi works as Manager- Communications & Learning at IWWAGE. She was last working as Communication and Advocacy Manager for Reckitt’s CSR programmes, Dettol’s Banega Swasth India (DBSI) initiative.

As far as her education goes, she has a master’s degree in Sociology from Jawaharlal Nehru University. She also comes with experience in policy with a demonstrated history of working in the non-profit organization management industry. To name a few, she has worked with International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), Aga Khan Foundation, Teach for India, FXB India. She is skilled in strategic communications, advocacy, project management, research, Sociology, data analysis (qualitative) and gender studies. She likes to spend time with her dog, bake cakes and try various cuisines in her free time.

Arpita Paul

Senior Research Associate

Arpita Paul is a statistician cum demographer with over 10 years of quantitative research experience in public health, market research, survey implementation around RMNCH issues in different contextual settings. Her research activities mainly focused on social determinants of health and wellbeing, understanding various aspects of maternal & child health, factors determining the health, wellbeing and living arrangement of the elderly.

Before joining IWWAGE, she was working with Public Health Foundation of India, Gurugram where she was the lead analyst. She has substantial experiences in survey design, large scale data handling, and advanced statistical analysis along with expertise in various statistical software. She has a PhD in Demography from International Institute for Population Sciences, Mumbai and a post graduate degree in Statistics from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi.

In her spare time, she enjoys reading and dancing.

Suchika Gupta

Research Associate

Suchika is working as a Research Associate at IWWAGE. She has completed her Bachelors in Arts from Sri Venkateswara college, Delhi University and MSc in Economics from Symbiosis School of Economics, Pune. She is a research enthusiast and loves gardening, making crafts, doing yoga and is a big linguaphile in her free time. Her research interests include poverty, inequality, trade, gender, and other developmental areas.

Sruthi Kutty

Program Manager

Bidisha Mondal

Research Fellow

Bidisha has worked extensively in various dimensions of socio-economic inequalities. Her core research interests lie in analyzing gender gap and discrimination faced by marginalized social categories in Indian labour market. Besides, she has thoroughly studied the trends in healthcare expenditure among Indian households and various kinds of inequalities existing there.

Bidisha has completed her masters from University of Calcutta and Ph.D. from Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her doctoral study looks into various kinds of labour market segmentation in Indian manufacturing sector.

Before joining IWWAGE, Bidisha has worked with National Institute of Public Finance and Policy for more than four years. Her research works got published in many peer-reviewed journals of national and international repute.

Sharon Buteau

Executive Director, LEAD at Krea University

Sharon Buteau combines expansive experience of over 18 years in research and international development, with over 7 years in the field of digital financial services and financial inclusion. Sharon is deeply passionate about finding effective solutions to promote enterprise growth and development, and realising the untapped potential of micro and small businesses.

At LEAD, Sharon focuses on bringing the right combination of talent, expertise and stakeholders together to ensure that investments and efforts are perfectly aligned with the desired goals. Sharon holds significant expertise on how to leverage co-creation, collaborative processes, as well using the power of data from the ground up can improve socio-economic outcomes for individuals, households and enterprises. She has in-depth knowledge in “right-fit research methods” and significant experience in the domain of financial capabilities and well-being, and small business and entrepreneurship development.

Sharon started her journey at LEAD in 2008, when she arrived in India with a strong desire to improve society by producing impactful knowledge that can bring positive change. Prior to joining LEAD, Sharon was an economist with Analysis Group in Montreal Canada.

Sharon holds an MSc in Economics from the Universite du Quebec a Montreal, as well as an MA in Social Research Methods from the London School of Economics.

Preethi Rao

Associate Director, LEAD at Krea University

Preethi Rao oversees the leveraging evidence function (collaborations, training, learning and communications, and innovations) and contributes to strategic decision-making at LEAD. Preethi has served the organization in various capacities such as Head – Innovation, Senior Operations Manager and Researcher (MSME).

As an Innovation Champion, she drives new initiatives and is responsible for conceptualizing new areas of interest for the organization. Prior to heading the Innovation vertical, Preethi has overseen the entire field data collection and digitization operations (spanning more than 10 states) of LEAD in her capacity as Senior Manager (Operations & Development). Preethi was the Director of the Jaipur Digital Payments Lab at Catalyst, where she oversaw the entire on-ground execution, managed partner/stakeholder relations, managed donor liaison and expectations, anchored M&E and was involved in the production of programmatic learning outputs. For IWWAGE, an initiative of LEAD conducting research on women’s economic empowerment, she serves as the Innovation Lead, assisting in setting up the hub, providing particular assistance in terms of confirming policies and procedures, and setting up outreach protocols in coordination with the team.

Apart from donning multiple hats at LEAD, over the years Preethi has undertaken interdisciplinary studies on access to finance for small and medium scale enterprises and the influence of macroeconomic policies on the low-income populations. She has also been involved in developing, designing and leading research studies and short term projects in open data, financial inclusion and MSMEs.

Preethi holds a Master’s Degree in Management from IFMR Graduate School of Business where her focus areas were Finance and Marketing.

In her free time, Preethi likes to write poetry, read fiction and watch documentaries on Psychology or experimentation on human behavior.

Trisha Chandra

Research Associate

Trisha is a Research Associate at IWWAGE. She has a Bachelors in Economics from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata and a Masters and MPhil in Economics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her MPhil thesis is titled Changing Contours of Regional Value Chains in East Asia. Her research interests include labour, gender, trade, value chains, migration, care economy and fragile and conflict affected areas. She has also worked on Indian agriculture, currency flows and gender budgeting for different projects.

Tanay Chanda

Research Associate

Tanay has completed his MSc in Development Economics from University of Sussex and MA in Economics from North Bengal University. Before joining IWWAGE, he was working at SUVITA, a non-profit start-up working on Child Immunization, and helped to scale up the SMS Reminder and Immunization Ambassador programmes. He also worked with DevInsights Pvt. Ltd. as a research executive and coordinated different projects. Tanay is interested in impact evaluation methodologies and cutting edge quantitative and qualitative research. His postgraduate dissertation focused on the economic impact of Self Help Groups. His areas of interest include financial inclusion, women economic empowerment, econometrics and impact evaluation.

Aikantika Das

Documentation Specialist

Aikantika is a Documentation Specialist at IWWAGE. She has an undergraduate degree in Sociology from Miranda House, Delhi University and a postgraduate degree in Rural Development and Governance from TISS, Hyderabad.

Aikantika has a work experience of over 6 years, mostly with women’s groups. She started her career with SERP, Andhra Pradesh in the MLE team on a World Bank project where she worked very closely with SHGs. She has also worked with CDFI at IFMR on conceptualising and implementing technology innovations for social benefit delivery with SHGs and Anganwadis as well as on the software development, testing and maintenance for the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana. Before moving to IWWAGE, she was working with the Population Council as a public health researcher where she was a part of a systematic review on women’s groups and health. She also co-led an implementation research study with NIRD&PR, Hyderabad to understand NRLM’s health and nutrition intervention with SHGs.

Parushya

Research Manager

Parushya is a Research Manager at IWWAGE. He supports research design and handles quantitative data and analytics on multiple projects focused on studying the informal economy, urban poverty, and social protection schemes. Before joining IWWAGE he was part of research projects assessing the role of property rights and public services on the economic and social mobility of urban poor populations.

A civil engineering graduate from the National Institute of Technology Karnataka and Young India Fellowship, Ashoka University, he has more than 5 years of experience in the development sector. He has worked as an International Innovation Corps Fellow with the University of Chicago followed by multiple research and consultancy roles with various international development organizations and government departments in India.

Neelanjana Gupta

Project Manager

Neelanjana is a researcher with an academic background in Economics and quantitative analysis. She has over five years of experience in conducting evidence-based research to inform challenging questions of public policy. Her areas of interest are education and financial inclusion with the cross-cutting theme of gender. She hopes to use her experience and knowledge to empower those who wish to create better lives for themselves, and thus, work towards inclusive and sustainable development. Previously, she has served at NITI Aayog’s Development Monitoring and Evaluation Office, and has published works on topics of human development while at Brookings Institution India Center. She is currently a Senior Research Associate at IWWAGE, a LEAD at Krea University initiative.

Neelanjana is a graduate of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs where she obtained a Master of International Affairs and holds an undergraduate degree in Economics with Honors and International & Global Studies from Brandeis University.

Soumya Kapoor Mehta

Head, IWWAGE

As the Head of IWWAGE, New Delhi, India, Ms. Soumya Kapoor Mehta leads IWWAGE’s efforts to generate, leverage, and synthesize evidence on women’s economic empowerment.

Soumya has an experience of nearly 18 years in the development sector, spanning research around gender, women’s empowerment, poverty reduction strategies, social inclusion challenges and policy levers to alleviate them around the world.

Prior to joining IWWAGE, she was working as an independent policy advisor for the World Bank, UNICEF, the Government of India, the Centre for Policy Research and the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), helping these institutions mainstream inclusion and gender issues in their research and projects ranging from investments in women’s collectives (NRLM), to sectors such as water, agriculture, infrastructure, urban development and environment and climate change. She has co-authored several World Bank and UNICEF research outputs, including some of their flagship reports and has two widely acclaimed books to her credit. Between 2003 and 2009, she worked as full time staff for the World Bank anchoring a large cross-country study on poverty and strategies to reduce it.

Soumya has a Tripos Degree from the University of Cambridge in Economics and a B.A. (Hons.) in Economics from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University. She has also been a Visiting Fellow to the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

Rhitabrita Mukherjee

Senior Research Associate

Rhitabrita is a Senior Research Associate at IWWAGE. She is a development economist and has worked extensively in the areas of social infrastructure, gendered economics, food security and ecological economics. Her areas of interest lie in creating sustainable solutions to socio-economic issues plaguing developing nations and LDCs.

She has a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Presidency University, Kolkata. Her graduation dissertation looked into the post-globalisation labour market and quality of labour in India. She has a master’s degree in Applied Economics from Jadavpur University, Kolkata with specialisations in Development Economics, Econometrics and Environmental Economics.

She has had more than 3 years of experience working as a full time researcher. Prior to joining IWWAGE she has worked as a Research Associate at the Center for research on the Economics of Climate, Food, Energy and Environment (CECFEE) at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI), Delhi. She also worked in areas of child labour, women’s education and sanitation amongst migrant labour, food security, nurturing entrepreneurial abilities in both impoverished agricultural communities and urban labour, river plastic pollution and the economics of the Sundarbans ecology as a researcher and M&E specialist with SOCEO gGmbH. She is a regular writer for the Public Economist- Policy Monitor.

Nidhi Gyan Pandey

Research Associate

Nidhi is a Research Associate at IWWAGE. She holds an undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Miranda House, University of Delhi and a Masters in Economics from Ambedkar University Delhi. She has been a visiting student at Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai, where she worked in the domain of labour economics, around the status of women’s participation in the labour force in major states of India. She is currently engaged in creating state factsheets for India, describing major trends in women’s workforce participation, using the recent PLFS data. Her areas of interest include applied microeconomics, feminist economics and Marxist political economy.

Ayushi Gupta

Research Associate

Ayushi is a Research Associate at IWWAGE. She completed her Post-graduation in Economics from Ashoka University and holds a Bachelors in Economics degree from Kamala Nehru College, University of Delhi. Previously, Ayushi has been associated with the Institute of Economic Growth (IEG) and Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) and has worked closely on matters of revenue mobilization. She is interested in issues of gender and caste discrimination especially with respect to resource allocation.

Ruchika Chaudhary

Senior Research fellow

Ruchika Chaudhary is an economist with over eight years of experience at the national as well as the international levels. She has worked extensively on the issues of labour and employment and specifically in the areas of gender equality and non-discrimination in Asia and the Pacific. She specializes in large-dataset and micro-dataset management, econometric analysis and modelling. She has a doctorate in Economics from the Centre for the Study of Regional Development, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Her doctoral thesis explored the complex issue of women’s work in India, in which their labour force participation behavior was examined. This included interviewing and elaborated analysis of domestic workers, as an important group of urban women workers.

Before joining IWWAGE, Ruchika has worked with the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Regional office for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok, and ILO’s Decent Work Team for South Asia and Country Office for India, New Delhi. She has also worked for the University of Manchester’s research project on ‘Use of Blockchain in ending Child labour’, taught undergraduate courses on economics at the University of Delhi, and conducted research on ‘urban poverty’ at the Institute of Economic Growth, and the National Institute of Urban Affairs. She has been awarded University Grants Commission’s Junior Research Fellowship in Economics. She has published her research in journals, edited books, and participated in various national and international forums.

Hiya Singh Rajput

Research Assistant

Hiya Singh Rajput is a Research Assistant at IWWAGE. She is an Economics graduate from Miranda House, University of Delhi and a post graduate in Economics from Ambedkar University Delhi. She engaged with several government and non-government organisations such as An-gawadi, Girl Rising India, Delhi Queer Pride, The WordsWorth Project and the Enabling Society at Miranda House. She is especially interested in the issues of gender and sexuality. Her long term goal is to work as an economist and policy analyst after completing her post-doctoral stud-ies.

Anjana Thampi

Research Fellow

Anjana Thampi is a Research Fellow at IWWAGE, and works with the Research and Analysis team. She is a development economist motivated to understand the problems of unemployment, women’s under-representation in the labour market, and market and non-market forms of discrimination and exclusion. Her areas of interest include gender, employment, food security and inequality.

Prior to joining IWWAGE, she has worked at the Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru. She has done her PhD at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Her doctoral thesis assessed whether food provisioning programmes have mitigated the mismatch between economic growth and nutritional indicators in India, and explored the impact of two such programmes on child nutrition and inequality. She has experience in applying statistical tools to large datasets. She has also worked and published on the high and rising levels of wealth inequality in India, and contributes opinion pieces on contemporary issues.